Brands of every kind take on many forms throughout their lifetime, but often the strongest brands adopt a singular identity that people will consistently notice over time and associate with those companies’ products. In the textiles industry, companies build their brands around everything from color and pattern to weaving processes, materials, and special manufacturing techniques.
At the helm of HBF Textiles for more than 25 years, Mary Jo Miller, VP of design and development, has guided the brand under the inspiration, “Bringing texture to life.”
Since the brand’s inception, it has partnered with a cast of design industry greats including Orlando Diaz-Azcuy, Robert A.M. Stern, and Barbara Barry. The past three years has seen HBF Textiles take a laser-sharp focus in solidifying its identity as an industry leader in high quality yarn textures. With guidance from New York-based boutique design consultancy firm 2×4, the textile company is now hitting its stride with a clear brand message of full yarns and depth of materials.
“We’ve built a lot of our reputation on texture, and our work with 2×4 has given legs to that message of who we are,” said Ms. Miller. “We want to bring visual integrity to the surface of textiles. We want to capture a residential, hospitality quality that crosses into corporate, and to translate something that is mechanically woven into something that looks and feels handwoven.”
One of the most impactful moves any interior products brand can make in defining itself is in its selection of outside designers. A brand’s in-house design team must instinctually dictate the brand message, but outside design collaborations often provide a slew of new directions by which the brand message can manifest itself.
In this respect, Ms. Miller and the HBF Textiles team has not shied away from bold choices. For its seminal 2014 collection, which won a Best of NeoCon Gold Award in the Textiles: Upholstery category that year, the company partnered with fiber artist Elodie Blanchard, who specializes textile design and fabrication, in particular large-scale textile installations.
This year, its collaboration with Erin Ruby, a leading designer of interiors and products, resulted in a collection that earned a Best of NeoCon Silver Award in the Wall Treatments category.“We look for individuals who speak our language, and who bring more depth to our brand,” said Ms. Miller. “There needs to be a kinship, as if they were an extension of our brand. And there is a lot of talent in this industry right now, which can make it difficult to make these decisions.”
For her 2014 collection of eight upholstery fabrics, Ms. Blanchard divided the focus into three parts: Texture – seen in Forge, Foundation and Twist; Geometric Patterns – seen in Braids and Bars, Dot Structure and Moving Blanket; and Conceptual Ideas – seen in Remember and Remember Houndstooth.
The imaginative Moving Blanket fabric delights with a dazzlingly simple inspiration, a moving blanket. Designed with a chevron pattern using a matelassé structure to enhance its padded construction, Moving Blanket is an elegant reinterpretation of a classic material, focusing on contrast and featuring both large- and thin-stitched lines inspired by artist Sol Lewitt’s drawings. Hues within the Moving Blanket lines range from vibrant brights to globally inspired tones, each carrying the name of an equally inspiring city around the world.
“Designing a textile collection is really a full collaboration,” said Ms. Blanchard. “It takes a whole organization to make something that people will hopefully want to buy, and Mary Jo has so much experience. “It’s a trial and error process that involves a lot of back and forth between many teams and the mills – what does it need, what does it need more of, what are the performance requirements. It’s like any other job in that you need to flexible.”
The collaboration also brings light to the vast differences in working styles associated with varying textile projects.
“In my textile installations, there’s a lot of samples, a lot of work with a contractor, and you’re working on-site with a big group of people,” said Ms. Blanchard. “With the textile collection, it was completely different; a lot of work on the computer and on paper.”
For her collection this year at NeoCon, Ms. Ruby, chose to approach texture through a lens of weathered, imperfect, everyday materials.
“Each fabric in the line ties back to the overriding concept of exploring the nature of time and wear, and how those elements impact fabric. Time, use, character – we wanted to explore the idea that these things enhance the quality of the textile.”
Indeed, the Erin Ruby Collection brings an uncommon, broken-in residential quality to a contract textiles market that is so often focused on the perfectly precise, brand new aesthetic.
“I haven’t seen that residential-hospitality type of quality in textiles yet,” said Ms. Ruby. “But, as contract interiors focus more and more on gathering spaces and amenity spaces, the product design must follow.”
Cork Cloth, which won Best of NeoCon Silver this year, is an innovative fabric made from cork, a 100% natural material. The pattern explores its use in cloth form as an alternative to leather in four colorways: Birch, Brick, Earth and Slate. Another standout fabric in the line is Brushed Canvas, which Ms. Ruby calls the “quiet pioneer of the collection.”
“It has a little bit of everything in it, but it’s a seemingly very simple textile. It’s infinitely specable, for both modern and traditional settings, and is soil and stain resistant.”
Just as Ms. Blanchard’s textile installations informed her collection, Ms. Ruby’s background in the design of interiors fed the design of her textile collection.
“As an interior designer, I want to bring an understanding of the workplace environmental to the design process,” said Ms. Ruby. “I only design products that I would specify. Is this something that is scalable? Can I spec it? Where can I see this being used?”
Three of the line’s fabrics are suitable for vertical use, and two of those three are also suitable for upholstery. And although the collection takes on a weathered, tumbled, broken-in feel, Ms. Ruby and the HBF Textiles team kept the performance capabilities at high standards.
“All of the fabrics have 50,000-100,000 double rubs,” noted Ms. Ruby, “because if they can’t hold up in the intended use, then what’s the point?”
This foray into collaborations in all corners of the design world makes sense, as Ms. Miller herself comes from a fine arts background; she holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and a Master of Fine Arts from Washington University in St. Louis. As a master’s student, she cultivated her passion for printmaking while working as a contract printer’s assistant on lithography prints for Roy Lichtenstein and Sam Gilliam.
Ms. Miller’s knowledge of mill technologies across the globe is almost unmatched, and that fact gives HBF Textiles an edge over stiff industry competition. She was recently named President of the Association for Contract Textiles (ACT), a mecca of contract textiles resources, advocacy and leadership in sustainability.
Under the creative direction of Ms. Miller, the Spring 2015 Collection combines inviting textures, luxury coated materials and mid-century motif from two perspectives – the television show Mad Men and the world of Andy Warhol. Comprised of eight designs in 48 colorations, Spring 2015 portrays a range of hues that evoke classic leather good colors to mid-century vivid accents to complex neutrals, while touting performance properties.
Big Floral and Big Floral Stripe, for example, were inspired by the Pop art movement and Andy Warhol’s 1964 Flower series, becoming a modern interpretation of that infamous series, with an emphasis on the textural cross-stitched surface. The fabric is reversible (yes!), and both designs exceed ACT heavy duty upholstery guidelines while available with a superior moisture resistant finish.
Also notable is Sweater, which emulates the feel of a favorite sweeter. The “cozy warm cocoon of fiber” is simple and elegant. A lofty knotted mohair yarn is the primary lead in this highly textured cloth available in one sophisticated color. Sweater contains rapidly renewable fibers and employs a knit polyester backing.
HBF Textiles’ future looks bright, as it will continue to seek out new, intriguing partnerships, as well as continue its relationships with previous collaborations. Ms. Blanchard will design the brand’s Fall 2015 collection, which will adopt her quirky patterning for multi-use, wrapped mid-panel and upholstery options.
“Every time we do a collection with someone, I feel like we come out of it with a new best friend,” said Ms. Miller. “We learn something new from every designer we work with.”